


There Went a Horseman

by thewightknight



Series: Ridiculous Crossovers Nobody Asked For [21]
Category: Highlander: The Series, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25701403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewightknight/pseuds/thewightknight
Summary: Nobody would ever call Adam Pierson’s life exciting. Methos could live with that.
Series: Ridiculous Crossovers Nobody Asked For [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1214289
Comments: 35
Kudos: 227





	There Went a Horseman

Nobody would ever call Adam Pierson’s life exciting. Methos could live with that.

The irony that the Watchers had put him in charge of researching himself provided a constant source of amusement, and he preferred amusement over excitement. Excitement got people killed.

His current incarnation provided him with stability and respectability. He appreciated the former and shook his head at the latter. He’d milk tracking his own legacy for everything he could until his lack of apparent aging forced him to move on. Or at least, that was the plan, until the day when a chance encounter in a used bookstore in Paris forced him to reconsider his plans.

He recognized her immediately. Andromache of Scythia appeared in no chronicles’ in the Watchers’ library, but that meant nothing. Over two thousand years ago, he’d stood with his fellow Horsemen, facing her across a battlefield in Syria. Fifteen hundred years later, they’d fought side by side in Egypt. Although immortal, she had no Quickening about her, and yet she died and lived again, the same as him and his fellows. The Game didn’t apply to her. That made her more dangerous, in Methos’s opinion.

When she bumped into him, he dropped the stack of books he’d accumulated. Her apology died on her lips when their eyes met.

“Methos,” she said.

He panicked. “I’m sorry? I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” he babbled, unable to meet her eyes. In his haste to escape, he missed picking up a book. She never missed anything.

“Was this yours?” she asked, holding out the volume— _The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_. “Old friends?”

He schooled his impression, giving her his best blank face. “Books are the best friends,” he said. She cocked her head, eyebrow raised, but let him pass without further questions.

After he left the bookstore, he took a circuitous route back to his flat, checking over his shoulder to see if she followed. He didn’t see her. That meant nothing, in his experience.

In the weeks that followed, he didn’t see her again. It took him awhile to recognize the other faces that followed him. If they’d watched him individually, it might have taken him longer, but the couple stood out in the crowd. Separately they’d have gone unnoticed longer, but together they made an impression. Not in their appearance, although if he studied them, he’d find their individual features striking over time, but as a pair they drew the eye. Their unconscious awareness of the other put them apart in a crowd. He could recognize the signs of a partnership that spanned the ages. He’d had one himself.

It took him longer to recognize the other one. Where the others stood out because of their togetherness, his solitary aloofness eventually drew Methos’s eyes.

Eventually he turned the tables. He let the couple trail him to his apartment. With shades open, he went about his normal evening routine—a book and a glass of wine, dinner, television news, and his current research for the Watchers. When he turned out his lights at the usual time, he changed into dark clothing and slipped out from a darkened apartment. Scaling the fire escape at the back of the building, he lurked in the shadows of the alley behind the building, waiting, watching.

When the couple emerged from their spot across the street he followed. Although they maintained an awareness of their surroundings, they weren’t expecting a tail, and tracking them back to their home took little effort on Methos’s part.

Considering the millennia she’d lived and the money any immortal inevitably amassed throughout the course of their eternal lives, Methos expected to trail the couple to a less modest house in a more desirable neighborhood. They mounted stairs worn bare of paint and opened a door whose creak Methos heard from the alley where he’d hid. Yellowed shades, half drawn, blocked most of his view, but he followed their shadows as they moved through the house, four of them, by his count.

He watched the house for a quarter hour while he ran options through his head. It wasn’t until he’d decided to leave that he heard a noise behind him—the faintest of scrapes, as of a shoe turning on a bit of gravel. By then the sun had set and shadows filled the alley. Under the cover of darkness, he drew his sword from under his coat and waited.

Whoever it was, they were good. They’d almost caught him unawares. But he’d been on his guard for millennia. He heard another cautious footstep and the rustle of fabric, an arm, most likely, raising a gun. He waited until the last moment before he spun, halting the swing of his sword with the edge against the skin of his stalker’s throat.

They’d sent the solitary one to take him unawares. As he watched, the man swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing above his blade. Methos saw the wheels churning behind his eyes, as he wondered whether he could bring his gun up and fire before Methos cut.

“Does your kind live through decapitation?” he asked of the man when it looked like he’d decided on the wrong choice.

“We’ve never tested it. I’d appreciate if you’d forgo experimentation.” Andromache sounded amused. “So it is you, after all.” She’d used the one before him as a distraction. She’d always excelled at strategy.

She moved forward until he could see her without turning his head. Her hands were empty, but that meant nothing, in Metho’s experience. He’d seen her tear apart men with those hands. “Stand down, Booker.”

Methos didn’t drop his sword when Booker uncocked the safety.

“I’d heard you were dead,” Andromache continued, no sign of worry in her face or voice at his continued stance.

“Heard from whom?” he asked.

“Various sources. When someone like you drops off the map, it’s a reasonable assumption.”

“Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Booker spoke for the first time, voice unsteady. “Um, Andy? Maybe you could ask your friend here to unthreaten my neck?”

“Andy?” Methos asked, pulling back and sheathing his sword before Andromache could ask.

“Less of a mouthful, and it fits with the times,” she said, then added, “ _Adam_ ,” mouth twisting into a wry smirk.

“Been looking me up, have you?”

“Figuring you out. Or trying to,” Andy said.

The silence stretched out between them as she held his eyes and he refused to blink. Who knows how long they’d have stood there if Booker hadn’t cleared his throat.

“Okay, I don’t know what’s going on with the two of you, but if you don’t mind, I’ll go back inside. I left a good bottle of beer on the table.”

Andy nodded, still without breaking eye contact, and Booker threw off a sloppy salute and sauntered off, a forced casualness to him that suggested he still felt the edge of a blade against his neck. Methos hadn’t drawn blood, but it had been a near thing.

“So, Andy,” Adam said, “are we done here?”

“Here,” she said.

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” he said to her retreating back. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one.

The next night, out of curiosity, he returned. That night, the house stood dark. The next morning every newspaper proclaimed some version of the same headline, of a prominent scientist rescued from terrorists, with no group claiming responsibility for the rescue. The house remained empty and Andy and Booker and the other two unnamed not-his-kind-of-immortals made no further appearances. Methos let himself relax as the weeks passed, burying himself in back in Adam with his research and his special project. As the months passed, he let their memory fade.

He had no warning. One afternoon as he sat at a table on the patio of a little café in an out of the way corner, the two unnamed men dropped into the chairs on either side of him. Before he had time to react, one of them speared him with his gaze and spoke.

“Why do you do it?” he asked.

“What? Drink tea?” he replied, even though he suspected her meaning.

“Nothing. How can you sit back and do nothing?”

“It’s easy,” he said, and they bracketed him with their scowls as he took a sip from his cup. He had a flash of envy, looking at the two of them. He remembered how it felt to have comrades. But he sensed with these two, there were no hidden daggers, no tests of dominance. These two men were partners, brothers, and maybe more—something he’d never had, but could, if he listened to them. Let them convince him into standing up and following them wherever Andy led. A longing rose within him, and he squashed it ruthlessly. He’d picked this life for a reason, left the fighting and the killing behind. “I’ve lived your life,” he said, picking up his book. With feigned nonchalance, he opened it to the marked page. “I chose something else. Simple enough.”

“Chose to do nothing,” the clean shaven practically spat.

“Nothing is good.” He let the weight of their stares wash through them. “Don’t bother trying to intimidate me. I’ve faced down worse than you more times than you could count.”

“Come. We’re wasting our time,” the one with the beard said. Without another word, they both rose. He didn’t look up from his book as they walked away.

Again, he put the encounter out of his mind, but it didn’t remain as deeply buried as he’d like. At least, that’s what he told himself when he met Duncan MacLeod. Those pesky other immortals were to blame for his involvement in Duncan’s life. If they hadn’t come along and bothered him with their inconvenient questions and holier-than-thou attitudes, he’d have gone along in his simple life and not allowed Duncan and Joe and Amanda to drag him back into the world he’d tried to leave behind.

Yes, it was definitely their fault. And if he ran into them again, he’d let them know.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want to say hi, [check out my profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewightknight/profile) for where I’m currently hanging out on this here internet thing. If you liked this, please share! Kudos are love and comments are always appreciated.


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